When John Desko was assured that joining a potential Big East lacrosse conference wouldn’t water down his schedule, he finally relented and decided his program would become a member.

Desko, the Syracuse men’s lacrosse head coach, was a fan of automatic qualification into the NCAA tournament, something each conference winner enjoys every year.

‘One of the reasons we decided to join was the (automatic qualifier),’ Desko said. ‘It’s significant because if you win your conference, you’re automatically in the (NCAA) tournament.’

Desko will get his wish. Just not this year.

After much hype and deliberation, the Big East lacrosse conference will officially start play in the 2010 season. Or at least a walk-through version of the conference will commence.

Officially, Big East lacrosse is here. But a lot of things remain unofficial.

For this season, the conference will consist of seven teams – Georgetown, Notre Dame, Providence, Rutgers, St. John’s and Villanova, along with the Orange. The teams will play a round robin-style six-game conference schedule.

But the rewards of membership in a conference are missing. There is no stipulation for automatic qualification into the NCAA tournament in the conference’s inaugural season. After the conference was officially created back in June of 2008, its members petitioned for the automatic berth, but the NCAA usually does not grant those appeals until a two-year period has passed.

So, as an unusual season of conference play awaits the Orange, its first season of Big East play will be about learning – learning what it’s like to be part of a conference, the nuances of their conference opponents and what challenges the new conference role might present.

‘It’s here,’ Desko said of the conference at the team’s media day Thursday. ‘It doesn’t count. So, in some ways for Syracuse, it’s learning what it is to be part of a conference.’

Desko said that all of the other six teams have been in conferences before the Big East. Syracuse, the two-time defending national champion, was one of the last independent teams in the nation before joining the conference. As of now, that number stands at six programs and will continue to dwindle in the coming years, when Bryant, Mercer and Monmouth are expected to join conferences.

‘I guess it’s a good place for us to be,’ Desko said. ‘We’re going to learn about the importance of conference games.’

Those conference games will be another step in the Orange’s trial run in 2010, as the team will see a few new faces that will, in time, become very familiar. While SU will continue rivalries with new conference foes Georgetown and Rutgers, it will also develop new rivalries with Notre Dame, Villanova, Providence and St. John’s.

Among those opponents, the Fighting Irish is expected to be the toughest, as it looks to be a serious contender to SU’s Big East title aspirations. The Orange will travel to South Bend for a May 1 matchup with the Irish.

‘Oh yeah, Notre Dame,’ said SU junior midfielder Jovan Miller when asked which conference game he was anticipating most. ‘Just going there, that experience is going to be crazy.’

Of course, with the additions of those conference opponents comes the loss of other traditional games on the schedule. Most notable is the rivalry with Massachusetts.

‘I’ve heard a lot of good stories about the UMass-Syracuse rivalry,’ senior attack Cody Jamieson said. ‘So we’ll lose some rivalries, but I definitely think we’ll create some new ones, too.’

And Desko doesn’t see a change in the strength of his team’s schedule. As Desko weighed the options of joining a Big East lacrosse conference with SU’s athletic director, Daryl Gross, one of his main concerns was compromising his independent program’s freedom to schedule whichever opponents they wanted.

But Inside Lacrosse magazine rates SU’s schedule tied for third in the nation, and Desko said it might even be better than last season’s.

‘We talked about it, and one of the reasons we agreed to go into the conference was that we found that our schedule wouldn’t be diluted,’ Desko said.

Automatic qualifier or not, Desko is approaching the first year of the conference the same as he will in the future.

And the goal for the entire Orange team is still the same, automatic qualification or not.

Win the Big East conference.

‘It’s definitely one of our goals,’ Jamieson said. ‘You never want to go in and say you finished second or finished third. The Big East is such a prestigious (conference), it’s an honor to say you won the Big East.’

Road Warriors

Besides the demanding opponents on its schedule, Syracuse will likely also have to battle the challenges of a travel-heavy schedule in 2010.

SU has seven scheduled road games along with the Big City Classic in East Rutherford, N.J. The last time the Orange scheduled this many true road games was in 2006, when it went 4-3 en route to a 10-5 record and NCAA semifinal loss to Virginia.

‘It’s a challenge for us,’ Desko said. ‘I guess what doesn’t kill you makes you better. So if we can survive being on the road, when you get into a playoff situation playing all those games on the road this year, I think it’s going to help us.’

Among the road tests for the Orange are dates at Virginia, Johns Hopkins, Rutgers and Notre Dame, along with a rematch of last year’s national championship game at Cornell on April 13.

‘To win a championship you have to win on the road,’ Jamieson said at the team’s media day. ‘We haven’t hosted a national championship here (recently), and we’ve still been able to win on the road.’

bplogiur@syr.edu

Published on January 19, 2010 at 12:00 pm